


The Mystery of the Egyptian Curse

by anabel



Category: Lynes and Mathey Series - Amy Griswold & Melissa Scott
Genre: Alternative Perspective, Case Fic, Established Relationship, F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-08
Updated: 2014-12-08
Packaged: 2018-02-28 15:04:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2737007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anabel/pseuds/anabel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While Mr Mathey and Mr Lynes attempt to solve the mystery of an Egyptian curse, Miss Frost solves the mystery of Mr Mathey and Mr Lynes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mystery of the Egyptian Curse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nabielka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nabielka/gifts).



Mr Mathey was not in his chambers when Cordelia arrived at the Commons, shaking the snow off her boots and unwinding her enchanted scarf from around her neck. It was a bright, cold morning, with the crisp smell of winter in the air, and she had been glad for the warm glamour knit into the scarf. 

A year ago, Cordelia would have been surprised to find Mr Mathey so late. He was a good metaphysician, if a bit young, and earnestly devoted to making a go of his practice. But recently – and particularly since the case of the writing desk that ate hearts – he had become a bit less regular with his mornings. It didn’t take a detective (or a metaphysical one) to deduce the cause, but that was none of Cordelia’s business. She lit the fire and started in on the morning post.

Mr Mathey arrived a half-hour later, stamping in from the cold. He looked uncommonly ruddy and cheerful, although his waistcoat was slightly rumpled. Cordelia hid a smile. “Good morning,” she said, politely.

“Good morning, Miss Frost,” he said, smiling at her.

A woman susceptible to manly charms – her friend Maddy, for instance – might have found that smile irresistibly attractive. Cordelia had long been aware that her employer possessed certain attributes commonly found desirable in a partner. However, even had she been tempted in such a direction, she knew that any attempt at seduction would elicit only dismay. 

“Mr Clark has written again,” she told him, finding the latest letter in the post. 

Mr Mathey checked in the act of setting his umbrella in the rack. “It can’t be his gate again. I swear I fixed it last time.”

“It appears to be his terrier,” she said, referring to the scrawled lines in front of her. “Mr Clark is convinced that Mrs Dawson, two doors down, has somehow interfered with his terrier in order to stop it from barking at her cats.”

“Oh drat,” Mr Mathey said, sinking into the chair by the fire and putting a hand across his eyes. 

Cordelia was reasonably sure that had she been a man, Mr Mathey’s oath would have been stronger. He needn’t have foregone on her account; girls’ schools were quite as up-to-date on their swearing as boys’, whatever the latter might think. She continued. “He wants you to examine the dog’s bowls, toys, collar, and other paraphernalia, in order to see if Mrs Dawson has put a curse on any of it.”

“A terrier,” Mr Mathey said, after a moment, in a tone of mournful contemplation. “Garden gates, terriers…”

“He pays promptly,” Cordelia pointed out. She did the books. Mr Mathey couldn’t afford to have scruples, even terrier-shaped ones. At least his retainer from Inspector Hatton’s Metaphysical Squad helped to keep them in the black. “And he was quite complimentary about the gate.”

“Condemned by my own success,” Mr Mathey said, still attempting for a mournful tone. It was undermined by the cheerful undercurrents that shone off him like light off silver. “I suppose it would be cruel to leave anyone tormented by his mortal enemies. Even if he be a dog beset by cats.”

“I’ll write to confirm,” Cordelia said. “Tomorrow morning, Mr Clark asks.”

“Tomorrow morning,” Mr Mathey agreed.

~*~

Half-an-hour later, Cordelia had just sent off the letter to Mr Clark, when the door to Mr Mathey’s office opened.

“Yes?” she asked, when her employer simply leaned against the lintel, looking irresolute.

Mr Mathey shook his head, as if to clear it. “Miss Frost,” he said, “if the birthday of, say, your mother were approaching, what gift would you give her?”

“That’s a very personal question, Mr Mathey,” Cordelia said, raising an eyebrow.

He looked surprised, as if he hadn’t thought that through. “Oh! I apologize. It’s just…” He sat down in the chair by the fire again. “My… mother’s birthday is in two weeks, and I confess that I am at a loss.”

If Cordelia had thought this was truly about his mother, she would have recommended a good hatmaker and had done. Perhaps a bookseller’s, if the lady was inclined to reading. “You might take her to lunch. Mothers are fond of spending time with their children, even grown ones.” As she knew full well herself.

“Yes,” he said, doubtfully. 

“Or perhaps she might like a terrier,” Cordelia suggested, keeping her face innocent of all mischief. “The ailing of Mr Clark’s dog might be due to the imminent arrival of puppies. You could claim one as your fee.”

She wasn’t sure if the look of appalled fascination on Mr Mathey’s face was due to the thought of a woman thus frankly alluding to the process of reproduction, or to the image of Mr Lynes with a puppy on his knee, but she rather thought the latter. In either case, it was an expression to be savoured, and she struggled not to laugh.

The door opened, breaking the moment, and Inspector Hatton tramped in. “Got a case, Mathey,” he said. “A corpse’s turned up dead in a locked room.”

Inspector Hatton’s nose was red, but he too looked uncommonly cheerful. Cordelia narrowed her eyes. She was going to have to a talk with her friend Maddy, the Inspector’s police matron. Was everyone in the world determined to be suspiciously cheerful this winter? She muddled along with an enchanted scarf, herself.

“Anything to show how he died?” Mr Mathey asked, collecting his things.

Inspector Hatton snorted. “His tie appears to have decided to strangle him, so I’d say so. I’ve told them to leave the scene alone until you’ve had a look, but his landlady is a handful, so the faster we’re through there the better.”

“His tie?” Mr Mathey asked, as they went out together. “That reminds me of…”

The door shut behind him, and Cordelia pulled out her ledger. If she balanced the books now, she might have time for a bit of study before Mr Mathey returned. He did keep sporadic hours, running all over London with Inspector Hatton and Mr Lynes. Some days she hardly saw him, and was left to fend for herself all day.

Not that Cordelia minded fending for herself. She smiled, and got to work.

~*~

Cordelia was halfway through Miss Wainwright’s soon-to-be-published treatise on household enchantments when the door opened again and Mr Lynes shivered his way into the room. “It’s cold out there,” he said, heading for the fire.

“It is,” she agreed. “Mr Mathey is out at the moment.”

Mr Lynes’ face fell. Only slightly, but she had made a study of faces when she was at school. “Will he be back soon?”

“I believe,” Cordelia said, marking her place in Miss Wainwright’s treatise with a slip of paper, “that he is at a crime scene. A tie has decided to strangle someone.”

Mr Lynes grinned. “More than usual?” Then he sobered. “Not that I’m making light…”

“Understood, Mr Lynes,” Cordelia said. “Would you care to wait? I’m sure Mr Mathey would be happy for you to make yourself comfortable in his office.”

She didn’t miss the quick sidelong glance he threw at her. How the two of them thought they were a secret was beyond her. She may not have been a detective like Mr Lynes, but even rudimentary skills in the art of observation were enough to point to the truth. Like the way Mr Lynes’ mouth softened and turned up slightly as he moved towards Mr Mathey’s office. Or the way they sometimes turned up within ten minutes of each other, rumpled and far too innocent.

“I’ll just leave a note,” Mr Lynes said. “If you’ll tell him I’ve been?”

“Of course,” Cordelia said.

But no sooner had he vanished into Mr Mathey’s office, than the door swept open again.

“Mr Lynes is in your office,” Cordelia informed her employer. “The tie case is officially one of ours, then?”

Mr Mathey’s face had lit up at Mr Lynes’ name. “Yes,” he said, absent-mindedly, shrugging off his coat. “It’s certainly one of ours. The landlady swears no one entered the house after dark last night – she has a dog as yappy as Mr Clark’s – and the lock on Mr Cooper’s door was unforced.” Mr Lynes had appeared in the doorway, and Mr Mathey half-turned towards him. “The strange thing is, there’s no curse on the tie. There’s residue, but no active curse.”

“Perhaps it had a limiting bound set to erase itself once the condition was met,” Mr Lynes suggested.

“Perhaps,” Mr Mathey agreed. “Excuse us, Miss Frost,” he said to Cordelia, then to Mr Lynes, “I’ve just come back to consult Graves’ work. I think it might…”

They vanished into Mr Mathey’s office, and shut the door firmly behind them.

Cordelia opened a new file for the tie case, placing it with its Metaphysical Squad fellows, and then reopened Miss Wainwright’s manuscript. She devoutly hoped that one of the men in Mr Mathey’s office remembered to put up a silencing enchantment this time. Her own were serviceable, but sounds did occasionally leak around the edges.

“Excuse me,” Inspector Hatton said, peeking his head around the outside door, “but is Mr Mathey in?”

Cordelia tilted her head to one side, momentarily lost for words, before recovering herself. “Come in, Inspector. Mr Mathey is consulting one of his books for guidance on the case. Have there been developments?”

“Yes,” Inspector Hatton said, unwinding his scarf and hanging up his coat. “I have a hysterical young woman in my office, swearing that her brother was strangled by an ancient Egyptian curse.”

“I wasn’t aware that ancient Egyptians wore ties,” Cordelia said, raising her voice slightly. Hopefully it carried enough that her employer would hear, without seeming out of place to Inspector Hatton.

The inspector laughed. He still seemed cheerful, despite having a corpse and its bereaved sister on his hands. “I daresay they don’t. But this fellow had been to Egypt recently, and the sister thinks he may have interfered with some local curse.” 

“Perhaps he interfered with a local metaphysical practitioner instead,” Cordelia suggested. “That might explain the choice of modern neckwear as a murder weapon, while still allowing for the Egyptian connection.”

Inspector Hatton nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking as well.” He looked at the closed office door. “Is Mr Mathey free?”

Cordelia folded her hands on her desk. “Mr Mathey is consulting with Mr Lynes at the moment.”

“I’ll, ah,” Inspector Hatton said, sounding slightly strangled, “come back later.”

Perhaps she should simply announce to all three of them that she knew already, Cordelia thought. It would solve a lot of this agonized tiptoeing around the facts of the matter. Mr Mathey and Mr Lynes were as David and Jonathan. Of a Greek persuasion. Confirmed bachelors. Why everyone expected this to shock her into a swoon, she really didn’t know. Women were made of a lot sturdier material than men generally thought. And for every David and Jonathan, there was a Naomi and Ruth as well…

But announcing her knowledge might send the _gentlemen_ into swoons, so she suppressed a sigh. “No need, Inspector Hatton,” she said, brusquely, standing and walking across the room to the office door. “I’m sure Mr Mathey and Mr Lynes will be happy to speak with you.”

She rapped firmly on the door, the no-nonsense prefect’s knock that she had learned as a girl. _Please_ , she thought, _let them have retained their common sense today_.

After a long moment, Mr Lynes opened the door. He looked only slightly more rumpled than usual, and his cheeks only a little flushed. “Oh, Hatton. Come in. Mathey was just filling me in on the case.”

Cordelia went back to her work.

~*~

The three men had been gone for some time – “if I’m not back by 3,” Mr Mathey had said, “close up, Miss Frost. We may have to visit the dead man’s friend in Sevenoaks” – and Cordelia had finished Miss Wainwright’s manuscript. Not bad, she thought, although several spells in Chapter Five were sloppy, and might lead to explosions. She would write to Miss Wainwright before she reviewed the work for the next edition of _Women’s Metaphysical Weekly_ ; if they hurried, the errors might be correctable before the book went to print, or at least errata slips could be inserted.

She looked at the clock. Nearly 3. It would be dark soon, but perhaps she had time to visit that tea-shop Maddy had recommended. It had a book-reading group, Maddy had said, and excellent tea.

There was a timid knock at the door.

“Come in,” she called, and sat up straighter. No tea-shop, then, she thought, with an internal sigh. Tomorrow, perhaps, if the weather didn’t turn nasty again.

The visitor was a young woman, pretty in a washed-out way, her clothes painstakingly respectable. Someone who had fallen on hard times but continued to try to keep up appearances, Cordelia deduced, and felt a pang of sympathy. “What can I do for you?” she asked, gently, waving the visitor towards the chair by the fire.

“It’s my brother,” the girl said, her lip wobbling. “He’s dead.” She burst into tears.

This was obviously Inspector Hatton’s hysterical sister. Or, rather, the hysterical sister of Inspector Hatton’s tie-strangled corpse – if Hatton had a sister, she hadn’t heard from Maddy. Cordelia fetched her spare handkerchief and gave it to the girl. “Mr Mathey will find out what happened to your brother,” she said, reassuringly. “He’s young, but he and Mr Lynes are very good at their jobs.”

The girl blew her nose, noisily. “I know what happened to my brother,” she said, around sniffles.

Goodness, Cordelia hoped she hadn’t been the one to discover the body. Though that would explain the hysterics. But Inspector Hatton had said it had been in a locked room, so perhaps not. “You do? Have you told Mr Mathey and Inspector Hatton?”

The girl shook her head. “I can’t.”

Cordelia re-evaluated the situation. The girl didn’t look like a murderess, but she took a nonchalant step backwards towards her desk and her wand, all the same. “Why can’t you?”

“Because,” the girl said, leaning forward, “I’m not supposed to _know_.”

Another David and Jonathan case? Surely not. Her mind was just going there because of earlier. “Know what?” she asked, letting a little of her boundless patience seep into her voice.

The girl bit her lip. “About Nell,” she said.

~*~

“Until you take Mrs Macmillan into custody,” Cordelia told Inspector Hatton, “Miss Cooper will need to be protected. If Mrs Macmillan realises that her lover’s sister knew about their affair – and knows that they had a romantic rendezvous in Egypt – she may very well attempt to silence the witness.”

He nodded, though he still looked distracted. “A married woman knowing metaphysics?”

“Many women know metaphysics,” Cordelia said. If her deductions were correct, he was walking out with a female metaphysics schoolteacher, so he should know that.

“Yes,” he said, dubiously, “but household metaphysics. Not _strangling a lover with a tie_ metaphysics.”

Mr Lynes, leaning against the wall, shrugged. “It’s Mathey’s field, but harmless enchantments can be used as a suggestion for how to construct harmful ones, if the wielder has a talent for it. A dark gift.”

Cordelia, thinking back to Miss Wainwright’s sloppy spells and the explosions they might have caused, suppressed a shiver. “In this case, I suspect Mrs Macmillan had the idea from a simple keep-warm glamour commonly knit into scarves. The specific Egyptian curse she used for the tie she gave to her lover may be tricky for Mr Mathey to track down, unless he finds the practitioner she consulted in Cairo, but the traces remain on the fabric.”

“You know something about metaphysics yourself, Miss Frost?” Inspector Hatton asked, warily.

Cordelia smiled. “I could scarcely avoid it, as Mr Mathey’s assistant, and as Miss Barton’s friend. But I promise not to strangle you with a tie, sir.”

Given that his day had started with a strangled corpse, she didn’t entirely blame him for moving off towards Mr Mathey and the still sniffling Miss Cooper. 

Mr Lynes, however, was watching her. “You solved that quite easily.”

“Once I knew about Mrs Macmillan, and Miss Cooper told me that her brother had rendezvoused with her in Cairo, the pieces came together cleanly,” Cordelia said, drawing the file to her. She’d have to finish the paperwork tomorrow – she was already late for dinner, and her mother would scold. “There have been rumours about Mrs Macmillan for a year now. If her husband had proof of a dalliance, he would bring suit for divorce. With a child to protect, a mother might very well take desperate action.”

“Still,” Mr Lynes said. “You have an analytical mind.”

“I do,” Cordelia said, without false modesty. She met his eyes squarely, then let her lips quirk upward slightly. “I observe many things.”

“Perhaps Mathey should use your skills more often,” he said, smiling in return. “Other women too frightened to tell the police things might come to you, not just Miss Cooper.”

“Miss Cooper did not come to me because she was frightened of Inspector Hatton,” Cordelia said. “She came to me because, as a gently-bred girl, she was not supposed to know about sex, or lovers, or what her brother did after he hurriedly left home on some evenings. Admitting that she had snooped in her brother’s love letters, and that she had realised what they meant by some quite explicit imagery, would have been putting her own reputation at risk.”

He cocked his head. “And you’re not putting her reputation at risk?”

“I advised her to tell Inspector Hatton that her brother told her about Mrs Macmillan,” Cordelia said, unruffled. “He is not alive to deny it, and she will not have to confess to reading and understanding the letters she burned.”

Mr Lynes’ smile turned into a grin.

“Women understand many things, Mr Lynes,” Cordelia said, still meeting his eyes, “even if they may not always share what they understand.”

This time, she saw recognition dawn. “Oh,” he said, sounding strangled himself.

“Oh,” she repeated, but then took pity and smiled at him. 

“You…” he started, but didn’t seem to know how to go on.

Cordelia knew something about precarious positions and dreading the day something would happen to interfere with your careful balancing act. Since her father had died, she had been the breadwinner, a difficult position for a gently reared woman. Even had she possessed the temperament for a governess, with a mother to support such a position was impossible. Thus she valued her position in Mr Mathey’s office highly, and she never forgot how much more difficult her life could have been. How much more must Mr Lynes and Mr Mathey worry, even in the midst of their domestic satisfaction, that a single incautious action, a single vindictive person, might take away all that they had worked so hard to achieve? Well might Mr Lynes blanch, to find that someone had deduced their secret.

“It isn’t obvious,” she said, delicately, if not entirely truthfully. But then, most people did not have the luxury of observing them in unguarded moments at close quarters. Inspector Hatton, the other person who might have had that opportunity, obviously already knew somehow. “But the way you look at each other is … telling.”

Mr Mathey and Inspector Hatton were still talking to Miss Cooper, but they were nearly done. Mr Mathey looked up and saw Mr Lynes’ unease; a frown appeared between his eyebrows.

“How do we look at each other?” Mr Lynes asked, flushing, as if he couldn’t believe he was asking the question.

“In many different ways,” Cordelia said, “but always with joy.”

“You mustn’t annoy Miss Frost, Mr Lynes,” Mr Mathey said, leaving Miss Cooper in the care of Inspector Hatton and coming over to join them. “I’d be lost without her.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Mr Lynes said.

“She could probably magick a scarf to strangle you,” Mr Mathey agreed.

Cordelia smiled at the pair of them. “I’m sure you would never give me cause.” She looked down at her work. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get home. You won’t forget Mr Clark tomorrow morning, Mr Mathey?”

“Mr Clark’s gate is acting up again?” Mr Lynes asked.

“It’s his terrier,” Mr Mathey said, affecting a woebegone tone. “I shall be diagnosing a dog. Egyptian curses one day, a dog’s digestive issues the next. Such a glamorous life we lead, Julian.”

“Remember what I said about the puppies,” Cordelia told him, devilishly, and left them to it.

“What puppies?” she heard Mr Lynes say.

~*~

_epilogue_

Mr Mathey and Mr Lynes did not end up acquiring a puppy. 

Cordelia met Miss Wainwright at Maddy’s teashop. They had a heated discussion about Miss Wainwright’s errors in Chapter Five, which somehow ended in Cordelia agreeing to edit her future work and then inviting her to dinner. Sarah had flashing brown eyes and an infectious laugh. And her inventiveness – with metaphysics, and with other things – was quite laudable.

Life in the Mathey office went on much as it had before. 

Sometimes, however, in the midst of the bustle that was a normal work-day, Cordelia saw the nonchalant shoulder tap, or soft elbow touch, or private smile that marked a couple at peace with the world. Once, when she had been out on an errand, she returned to find Mr Mathey in the chair by the fire, with Mr Lynes perched on its arm. They were consulting a book, not engaging in anything illicit, but they still jumped when she came in. Indeed, Mr Lynes started to get up; but Mr Mathey put a casual hand on his knee and kept talking about the argument of the book he held, until Mr Lynes relaxed again, and even smiled.

For his birthday, Mr Lynes mysteriously acquired a working egg-cooker.

In the spring, Mr Mathey had a birthday. His present was a white kitten named Guinevere, who ruled the office, terrorised the mice, and quite liked a saucer of milk in the mornings.

And if, occasionally, two of Guinevere’s minions disappeared into the inner office and unfairly shut the door, she was quite happy to be worshipped by her third minion, who knew just how to scratch her ears.

It was almost magical.

~*~


End file.
